The Cage of Zeus (22 page)

Arino left Wolfren and headed for the control center where Shirosaki and Kline awaited his return.

After hearing the details of Wolfren’s confession from Arino, Kline sighed. “Are you telling me
that
was the reason why he aided the terrorists?”

Kline’s look of disappointment seemed to Arino a vivid reminder of Wolfren’s desperation.

Her belittling reaction was precisely the cause of Wolfren’s despair. Kline had failed to recognize it in all her associations with him and failed to recognize it still, even after she’d heard Wolfren confess as much.

“What will you do with Wolfren?” asked Arino.

“There’s nothing we can do. We have no laws here to try him. Wolfren was born with the understanding that he would never leave this station. Neither the courts on Mars nor on Earth have the jurisdiction to try him,” Kline said.

“I’m sure you’re not thinking of taking matters into your own hands,” Arino said, unable to completely hide his suspicion.

“The Rounds are human, no matter how they are formed. Even as a supervisor, I’m not empowered to take Wolfren’s life.”

“I see.”

“The Rounds are our good partners and the hope of humanity. There’s nothing about that statement anyone needs to be suspicious about. Tenebrae couldn’t understand that. That’s why he forsook his given name to become Barry Wolfren,” Kline said. “A shame, really. We gave him a perfect body and home, yet he fled this paradise all on his own. Suck the Rounds dry of all their acquired data and toss them away? How can he be so delusional? He has no idea just how blessed his life has been.”

The moment Arino heard that last statement, he felt an intense sympathy for Wolfren. He left Kline, however, without another word.

Kline received a message from Weil at the Europa Research Station.

“
The governments on Earth and Mars and the Planetary Bioethics Association have reached a decision, Kline. They’re asking you to hold out a little longer. To try to ride out the storm yourselves as best you can until the situation reaches crisis point.”

Kline listened to Weil’s message calmly as if she’d expected this answer all along.

“
You have my word, Kline. I have no intention of turning my back on Jupiter-I. If the situation turns grim, you’ll have the full support of Europa’s research station. Hang tight, Kline. None of the staff have been affected thus far, am I right?”

In the end, that was what it came down to. If the Rounds all died, the planetary authorities would just produce some more. But if the station staff were in peril, then they would intervene directly. That was the final answer from the outside.

“We’ll have to find out the formulation of the chemical agent from Karina,” Kline informed Shirosaki. “Apply a little pressure if necessary.”

Karina was being held in a separate interrogation room. Her leg wound treated, she sat on a chair in the middle of the room with both hands cuffed behind her back.

Shirosaki and Harding entered the room with two security officers in tow, followed by Kline, then Tei.

After examining Karina, the doctor determined that the prisoner was well enough for questioning.

“You have something in there that could act like a truth serum?” Harding asked as Tei closed eir medical pack.

“We have nothing of the sort in this station,” Tei replied, shaking eir head.

“Then I guess we’ll have to
make
her talk.”

“Please don’t,” said Tei, interposing emself between Harding and Karina. “Let me talk to her.”

Karina looked up at the figure of Tei standing before her and smiled.

“You’re Karina Majella,” Tei said. “We’ve met once before. Kline brought you into the infirmary about five years ago with stomach pain. I remember giving you a prescription for painkillers.”

“You remember well.”

“Von Chaillot is not your real name?”

“I needed an alias to go to university. My given name is Karina, but I have no family name.”

“Like the Rounds.”

“Don’t compare me to the Rounds,” Karina said. “It’s true some people on Earth do without last names as a matter of choice or culture, but many more don’t have family names due to unfortunate circumstances of birth and upbringing.”

Tei knitted eir brows. Karina lowered her gaze and let the tension out of her shoulders. “I remember you too, Doctor. You came across as a terribly attractive man and woman simultaneously. So much so that it’s difficult to forget you. If you’re not careful, a Monaural will have his or her way with you someday.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” Tei said perfunctorily. “You are now in custody. You’ve failed your mission. Tell us about the substance you dispersed in the special district—its name, composition, and cure. You’ll only be helping yourself if you cooperate.”

“Why do you give a damn what happens to me?”

“The Round children are running high fevers, especially the newborns and two- to three-year-old children. Until we find out what’s making them sick, we can only treat their symptoms, and for how much longer, I don’t know.”

“As soon as I tell you, your friends are just going to kill me. In that case, I’d rather see you run yourselves ragged to find a cure before I die.”

Tei put out eir arm to stop Harding’s angry advance toward Karina. “You dispersed the agent even as you were inside the special district yourself,” Tei continued. “Were you prepared to die with the Rounds, or did you and the others inoculate yourselves with a vaccine? There has to be a reason. Or is it a substance that only affects Rounds?”

Tei could hear Shirosaki and the others in the room gasp.

“Affect only Rounds? Is that possible?” asked Shirosaki.

“It’s simple,” Tei answered. “The Rounds have many synthetic genes that Monaurals don’t. Unique among them is ‘double-I’—the sex chromosome carrying the genetic information to create the hermaphroditic physiology. If you can create a substance that latches on to double-I as if it were a marker chromosome, it would be possible to create a biological weapon that only affects Rounds. If Karina didn’t vaccinate herself beforehand, then that’s the only plausible explanation for why she is unaffected. That’s how she was able to disperse the agent. It would also explain why Barry Wolfren wasn’t in the special district. He may look male physically, but he still carries the double-I sex chromosome. If he’d gone inside the special district, he would have been affected. That must be why he was working outside the special district, apart from Karina.”

Harding pushed Tei aside and pulled Karina up by the collar. “Is what the doctor saying true?”

Karina looked Harding dead in the eye and sneered. Red-faced, Harding slapped her. Saying nothing, Karina looked away and spat blood on the floor, an imperceptible laugh escaping her twisted lips.

“Please stop,” Tei cut in.

“Look, she’s not going to talk unless you get rough with her.” Harding glared at Tei as if he might knock em down next. “We don’t have time to play games.”

“What if she dies?”

“I won’t let that happen. I won’t kill her, but she’ll damn well hope that she was dead.”

“Stop him, Commander Shirosaki, please,” Tei pleaded. Shirosaki could only shake his head. Tei could not hide eir disappointment. “Are you condoning this?”

“You forget that I’m a security officer.”

“You disappoint me, Commander.”

“Right now, our priority is to save the Rounds.”

Taking Tei by the arm, Shirosaki wrangled both the doctor and Kline out to the corridor. “Don’t come back until we’re done here. This won’t take long. She’s isolated and with one of her accomplices dead…it’s only a matter of time until she realizes it’s over.”

“I understand,” said Kline. “You do what you have to do to get us the information that we need.”

Bowing his head slightly, Shirosaki said, “Thank you,” and returned inside.

Tei put eir hands on the door, but the lock had already been activated. Tei slammed eir fist against the door.

“He’s right, Doctor. We should leave Karina to them and look after the Rounds.”

“I don’t believe you. Is this the way you Monaurals do things?”

“We’re prepared to do anything to save the lives of the Rounds. That’s our responsibility for having created you. Save your complaints until after we’ve saved the patients. You are a doctor, Lanterna.”

Tei stepped away from the door and fixed a hard look on Kline. “I’ll help them, yes. I don’t want to see any more people die needlessly.”

The children’s fevers persisted. Although the doctors were able to keep the fever from exceeding 40 degrees Celsius, there was no telling how much longer the medication would remain effective.

Many of the patients, including the adult Rounds, were presenting with fevers and fatigue usually associated with a common cold. To Tei the symptoms seemed similar to those of acute hepatitis. With the proper equipment ey could run diagnostic analyses, but that option wasn’t available.

The doctors, worrying about the possibility of Tei being infected, urged em to stay away from the makeshift treatment center, but Tei refused, insisting that eir suit would protect em.

Tei buried emself in caring for the patients in an effort to forget Shirosaki’s sudden shift in attitude. The doctor had assumed Shirosaki was a peaceful man for a security officer. Ey had sensed something gentle and polite about him—that he was far more understanding than Harding.

But Tei had overestimated him terribly. Shirosaki was a man capable of divorcing his emotions from his duties; Tei was no match for his cool sobriety.

Even as Tei was often called on to treat eir patients as “subjects” of sorts, ey felt as if ey were made to realize eir own shortcomings in that regard.

Perhaps that was the difference between emself, who knew nothing of the world outside Jupiter-I, and Monaurals, who, for better or worse, weathered the storm of Mars’ and Earth’s complex societies.

If the Monaurals were fish swimming the open waters, the Rounds were plankton inside a droplet from a syringe—a simple life-form compared to Monaurals.

Tei could somewhat understand why Wolfren wanted to find a way off the station, even if it meant cooperating with the Vessel of Life. Enjoying relatively high standing as a doctor, Tei had not felt the kind of desperation Wolfren had. Though Tei was sensitive to the friction existing among the Rounds, ey had no cause to reject Round society as a whole.

As the doctor switched out an empty intravenous bag for a new one, ey received a call from Shirosaki on eir wearable. “We need you to check on Karina’s condition.”

Tei pursed eir lips. “You people beat and torture her and now you’re demanding I treat her?”

“You must understand that if I wasn’t present, Harding would have done a lot worse.”

“Are you suggesting that you stayed behind so you could spare her?”

“That’s right.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that you approved her torture.”

“I felt that was the best course of action at the time, as hard as it may be for you to understand.”

“There are other doctors. You can ask one of them.”

“I trust you to give Karina the care she needs.”

“You must believe me a fool.”

“We can’t allow the Rounds to die, you know that. You have to make Karina talk to you.”

“How do you expect me to accomplish what you couldn’t?”

“I’m not asking you to interrogate her. She might let down her guard and reveal something. Karina seems to feel some sort of connection to you.”

“I wouldn’t have a clue what to do,” Tei said.

Tei fell silent for several moments, and after gathering the necessary first aid supplies onto a tray, left the special district.

Upon arriving at the residential district, Tei found a security guard stationed at the door to the room where Karina was being held. The guard prompted Tei to enter, saying, “I’ll be right outside if you need anything.”

“You’re not going in with me?”

“Do you require my presence?”

Tei opened the door.

The woman, who’d been sitting on a chair when Tei had left her, now lay on her back, her clothes in terrible disarray.

She lay barefoot and nearly lifeless, with her hands tied behind her back. The toes of both feet were smeared with blood. Blood oozed out of the bullet wound on her left leg. Her eyes were shut, and only her chest heaved up and down.

Tei knelt down next to Karina, nearly sickened with anger, and opened eir medical pack.

Karina flinched as Tei began to wipe her face with a wet cloth. She was still conscious.
Not surprising
, Tei thought.
It was hard to imagine she could lose consciousness given the excruciating pain she must be in.

Tei gingerly removed Karina’s clothes to examine her. Her body was battered with bruises. She let out a cry and squirmed when Tei gently pressed down around her ribs. Perhaps they were cracked, or worse, broken. A simple MRI would give Tei an exact diagnosis, but it was Karina who had destroyed the medical equipment.

“Do you think you can answer a few questions?” Tei asked.

Karina nodded slowly.

“Any pain in your head or nausea?”

“No.”

“Any pain when you breathe?”

“A little.”

“Hold on, I’ll get you a brace.”

Standing up, Tei rushed to the door and stuck eir head out at the security officer standing guard. “I need you to go to the infirmary and ask for a rib brace.”

“You’re asking me?”

“Help me out, would you?”

“I can’t leave this post. There’s no telling what the prisoner might do if you two are left alone.”

“Do you expect her to get up and flee after what you people did to her? She’s been brutalized and all of her toes broken.”

Without answering, the guard used his wearable to relay Tei’s request. After several minutes, one of the station staff delivered a brace from the warehouse.

Tei swore and returned to the room with the brace.

Karina lay on the floor, laughing, the wet cloth on her forehead where Tei had left it. Her lips twitched into a twisted shape, not so much because of the pain but as if to ridicule Tei and the guards.